Pattern Is Movement - Pattern Is Movement (2014)

Pattern Is Movement redefine what it means to return. Their self-titled fourth album is the story of what they've seen and of what we've all seen since 2008's All Together: a new and shifting territory, half-jungle/half-city, where a percussive primal R&B heartbeat keeps time with baroque melody of civilization. Counting among its touchstones everything from Drake, Fred Hammond, Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, Prince, Bollywood, Outkast, Springsteen, and Werner Herzog to peers like Bon Iver, Candy Claws, Beirut, and Thundercat, Pattern Is Movement unearths an entirely modern artifact right under our feet. It's beautiful and pulsing. It'll make you sweat. Founded in Philadelphia by Andrew Thiboldeaux and Christopher Ward, Pattern Is Movement map a vast territory of internal exploration and external output. As the band recorded a series of albums over the past decade The (Im)possibility of Longing, Stowaway, and All Together they also shifted in membership and in stylistic focus, eventually solidifying into a powerful duo: Thiboldeaux on Rhodes, synth, bass, and vocals, and Ward on drums. Deeply soulful and natively genre-defying, they've toured extensively, joining bands like St. Vincent, The Roots, and Shudder to Think, and will embark on a nationwide tour this March and April with Yellow Ostrich, including appearances at SXSW. sounds like what might happen if Justin Vernon went into the studio with Spoon sharp and propulsive yet airy and steeped in white noise, its e¬ortless falsetto croons riding to glory atop a drifting keyboard figure that elicits callbacks to Super Rich Kids and Bennie And The Jets. STEREOGUM //